James Franco as poet Allen Ginsberg in the movie Howl. But will you be howling with delight or displeasure at Metro’s effort below? (Picture: ND Live)

What is the point of poetry? Is it an archaic form of expression which no longer serves any purpose or a vital way to convey our emotions? Metro dusts off its old GCSE notepad and investigates. In verse.

When I was but a little boy,
I would often select a toy
To play with on a rainy day,
As sun gave way to clouds of grey.

Lego, Boggle – I had them all
And ready at my beck and call,
Yet before long there came a time
To say, ‘So long, Optimus Prime’.

Then one day with a doting look
My mother handed me a book.
It had these strange things called ‘pages’,
Threw me into angry rages.

But soon the anger turned to glee,
What was this fun in front of me?!
Nothing in there was all that tough,
Not Roald Dahl nor Roger McGough.

‘Mother dearest, what’s this?’ I cried.
‘Why, this is poetry,’ she replied.
And since that day I’ve tread a path
Of Whitman, Wordsworth, Wilde and Plath.

Poems have power to warm the heart
Or pierce it like an arrowed dart.
They leave you teary, on the floor
And also make the spirits soar.

Yet there are those who think it dumb
And have a different rule of thumb
When it boils down to what they like,
TS Eliot can take a hike.

It’s often easy to forget
That many poets are not dead yet.
Rappers, singers, Gaga, Murs
Just poets who do loads of tours.

More gripping lit you can impart
If you stray from the iTunes chart
And if you think poetry’s stuffy,
You must try Carol Ann Duffy.

Tim Atkins, Uni London, East
Says poetry is a fearsome beast.
Poet, lecturer, talking head
From a reading in Reading, said:

“PoliticalPoetry =Koalas inBalaclavasDoingOrigami”

Wise words from Tim, you will concur
But how does poetry stay in flair?
On Twitter now where Sixth Form Poet
Is gaining fans, doesn’t he know it:

“I have found the perfect wayTo ruin someone else’s dayIs making everything you sayA poem

People often say to meThat I should give up poetryBut my response will always be A poem

I wish I lived in Shakespeare’s eraPeople then were much sincerer They would travel miles to hearA poem”